Perhaps Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak needs to read it aloud for the One who is hard at hearing and possibly blind as well. The voters have spoken in Permatang Pauh.

Congratulations to Saudara Anwar Ibrahim. It needs to be said that there were more UMNO members there then the number of votes our man received, i.e. even the UMNO members chose not to back our nominee. Nonetheless, Anwar's win is legitimate.

Barisan Nasional got WHIPPED! Plain and simple. The voter turnout was less than the March election yet the winning margin increased for Pakatan despite the advantage BN had using the government machinery with unlimited financial resources. That's a TRIPLE WHAMMY!!!

Some argued that Anwar won resoundingly because of the September 16th deal that he's selling to the Rakyat. So the Permatang Pauh people were hoping to get a homegrown Prime Minister. I'd rather not venture on what worth they put on the current Prime Minister who is also the Chairman of the Penang State UMNO Liasion Committee.

It is shameful and selfish to stay longer than one's welcome. It's also mind boggling that the presumptive heir apparent who is supposedly highly intelligent puts much faith in the pledged power transition due to take place in two years time when several indicators including strong political intuition seem to show and feel that it is very unlikely to materialize.

We are told not to misconstrue the Permatang Pauh election results. Going back to the basics, I feel that some things should be taken at face value and we should snap out of this state of denial that we're in before we start believing in our own lies.

Gerakan, a component of the Barisan Nasional (BN), has called for stern action against Bukit Bendera Umno division head Datuk Ahmad Ismail over his recent “seditious” remarks on the Chinese community.

During a ceramah in Permatang Pauh on Aug 25, Ahmad was alleged to have said the Chinese were mere squatters or temporary residents of the nation and therefore, it was impossible to achieve equal rights amongst races in the country.

“Many Malaysians are disappointed with the mild statement by Prime Minister and Umno president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi when commenting on the seditious statement by Datuk Ahmad Ismail.

“They (Malaysians) had expected a strong rebuke, especially on Aug 31, a day all Malaysians celebrated the country’s independence.

“After 51 years of independence, any further doubt of loyalty of any Malaysian of any ethnic origin and the questioning of citizenship is beyond the understanding of all Malaysians,” Gerakan secretary-general Datuk Seri Chia Kwang Chye said in a statement today.

In the run-up to the Permatang Pauh parliamentary by-election last week, Ahmad allegedly made the remarks and yesterday, Abdullah commented on it when he said he would “tell him (Ahmad) not to do it again.

“You know, in a campaign all sorts of things can come up. I don’t think he meant it. I will make sure to tell him not to use it again,” Abdullah had said yesterday.

Chia said Ahmad’s statement was outdated and racially provocative, adding that any sign of the Barisan Nasional tolerating any outrightly racist and provocative views would give the wrong signal to the people.

“Ahmad Ismail should not only retract what he uttered and also apologise to all Malaysians but also be disciplined so as to prevent such divisive statement or action from being repeated. Such archiac views can further divide a multi-ethnic country like Malaysia,” he added.

Kelantan will still pay a month’s bonus to state government employees similar to the one received by public sector employees at the federal level although the state government’s debts have exceeded the value of its assets.

Menteri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat admitted that the financial resources of the Pas-led state government was weak but it had taken thrifty measures.

The Pas spiritual leader also defended his administration saying that the state government had never squandered because it was a sin.

He told reporters this while commenting on the Auditor-General Report 2007.

According to Auditor-General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang, the 2007 Kelantan State Audit report showed the state’s financial position was not strong because the amount of debts incurred exceeded the value of assets.

When tabling Budget 2009 last Friday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the payment of a bonus of a month’s salary or minimum RM1,000 to the civil servants.

“Every year we pay a bonus. It’s just that we are discussing how it will be done... Insya Allah there is,” said Nik Aziz. — BERNAMA

KUALA LUMPUR, Sun: MCA leaders look all set to make their respective bids for party national positions, kicking-off their campaign rounds and criss-crossing the nation to garner votes for the election slated for Oct 18.

And like the US presidential race, which had now reached a feverish pitch after both democracts and republicians picked their respective candidates, aspirants of the second largest Barisan Nasional component party are expected to follow a similar path, announcing the posts they would like to contest.

For the time being, Ong seems to be the lone candidate for the presidency of the party which consists of some one million members. Wee wants to be Youth chief and Chew intends to go for the Wanita head post.

The position of Youth chief fell vacant, following a decision by Datuk Liow Tiong Lai, who is also health minister, to go for the parent body position.

The Wanita chief post has also seen a vacancy with incumbent and Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen wanting to have a shot at one of MCA’s top three posts.

However, this calm setting is about to change in days to come, as indications are that after testing the ground, other leaders are expected to announce their intention on the positions they would like to contests at the MCA polls.

Wanting maximum media coverage, leaders like Home Affairs Deputy Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung and Federal Territory MCA chief Datuk Tan Chai Ho are expected to announce their candidancy for the MCA vice presidency on Monday, knowing very well that newspapers would be hunting for stories to fill their pages during the three-day Merdeka holidays.

“I will announce my decision on Monday (Sept 1) in Alor Setar after the state liaison committee meeting,” Chor told Bernama when asked if he would go for the vice presidency.

Other MCA leaders like secretary-general Datuk Ong Ka Chuan and vice-president Datuk Donald Lim Siang Chai, who are likely to square-off for the MCA deputy presidency are expected to follow suit in the “very near future.” Ong, the younger brother of outgoing president Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting, had indirectly hinted that he would go for the party’s second post, after three MCA divisions in Perak announced that they supported him for the number two post two days ago.

While Lim has not made any comments on the post he wants to contest, ardent supporters of the former deputy tourism minister reveal that the “boss” would also go for the deputy presidency.

“I will announce my decision after the state MCA Youth and Wanita elections,” he said. The state MCA Youth and Wanita polls will be held simultaneously nationwide on Sept 6.

Another heavyweight, Dr Ng, is also expected to announce her bid in the next few days, possibly Monday, and talk is that the Iron Lady of MCA will fight for one of the four vice-president posts in the MCA. Sources also reveal that the outspoken Wanita leader will join the crowded veep race.

Liow, who is not defending his MCA Youth chief post, is expected to make his announcement on Wednesday. He is likely to be another vice-president candidate.

However, the bulk of party leaders are expected to fight for the 25 MCA Central Committee (CC) positions, which would be up for grabs.

Several Chinese-based newspapers have put the CC aspirants to as high as 126, with some divisions having up to three members wanting to go for the CC post.

“These people have expressed their intentions, but this does not neccessarily mean that they will file their nomination papers. As in the past, at least half will pull out,” said a party insider.

This time around, the party polls will see several “big” names missing such as OngKa Ting, deputy president Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy, treasurer-general Tan Sri Lau Yin Pin and organising secretary and former deputy education minister Datuk Hon Choon Kim.

Others who will not be contesting are MCA publicity chief Datuk Fu Ah Kiow and former culture, arts and heritage deputy minister Datuk Wong Kam Hoong.

These leaders have either decided not to seek re-election or will retire from active politics.

However, the question frequently asked about this MCA polls remains unanswered. Who will take on Ong Tee Keat for the party’s number one post?

Party insiders reveal that the contender could be either MCA vice-president Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn or former MCA vice-president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek. But these two leaders could form a pact and battle it out on who should go for the top post.

“However, until now, we are still in the dark. Dr Chua wants the top post,” a party insider close to the two leaders told Bernama.

Dr Chua seems to be a clear candidate, trading barbs with Ong Tee Keat in cybespace via blogs and this is viewed by many educated MCA delegates as a good avenue to get to know the two leaders.

“It is as good as their manifesto. For Dr Chua, it shows that he is preparing to contest,” an aide to a MCA minister said.

In his blog, Dr Chua projects himself as choice to revive the MCA which received a massive blow at the March 8 general election, while Ong portrays himself as a consistent leader “without any moral issue.” However, should Dr Chua, the former health minister, opt to go for the party’s top post, the issue of morality due to his previous sex scandal will definitely haunt him during the campaign.

While these two leaders seem to be locked in battle, former health minister and veteran MCA leader Datuk Chua Jui Meng is the dark horse as he too, is said to be “eyeing” the MCA top post.

The path is clear for Chua after he retained the Bakri (Johor) MCA division head post and “he is likely to announce his decision next week,” an aide to Chua told Bernama when asked to comment.

The next few weeks seem to be exciting times for the MCA.

Besides winning positions, party leaders know that a bigger battle awaits them. And that is to the hearts and minds of the Malaysian Chinese who deserted the party at the recent general election. — BERNAMA

Newly elected Permatang Pauh Member of Parliament Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was today reminded of the sacrifices made by the people in the parliamentary constituency and not to forget their deeds.

Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said that the people of Permatang Pauh had sacrificed much to look after Anwar’s family all this while and yet did not ask for any favours when she was the MP for the constituency.

Dr Wan Azizah - who was the former Permatang Pauh MP from 1999 before stepping down on July 31 to enable Anwar, who is also her husband, to contest the seat - said this at a thanksgiving with the Wanita PKR machinery at Yayasan Aman, here.

Meanwhile in his speech, Anwar, who is also the PKR advisor, reminded Penang Deputy Chief Minister Muhammad Fairus Khairuddin to go down to grassroot level more often to look into the problems of the people.

Anwar said although the State Assemblyman for Penanti was busy with state business, he must spend time to meet the people in his constituency and the feedback received was that the young PKR leader was seldom seen in his constituency since winning in the general election in March.

“I’m worried because the people have never complained openly, and they have asked me to advise Fairus. Although we are busy, we must spend time to meet the constituents because they will understand if we are busy, but they cannot accept it when we don’t get down to the 'ground'." Anwar said Fairus, when met later, said he accepted the criticism in a positive manner and would endeavour to improve his service to the people not only in Penanti, but the whole state of Penang.

He said he was spending much time with Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng in drawing up state administration programmes for the past five months, and if the people had any problems, they could seek assistance at his service centre in Tanah Liat. — BERNAMA

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim rejoined Malaysia's Parliament on Thursday, resurrecting his mission to become prime minister a decade after he was charged with sodomy and his career written off.

Hours after he was sworn in, Anwar staged a walkout to protest proposed legislation that critics say is meant to bolster a new sodomy case against him.

Anwar says his alliance is on track to topple the government by Sept. 16 with defections from the governing National Front coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since its independence from Britain in 1957.

"I am glad to be back after a decade. I really feel vindicated. I feel great," Anwar said on Thursday.

Anwar was forced to resign his Parliament seat in 1999 amid a sodomy allegation and was jailed for six years after he was convicted of corruption and sodomizing his family driver. The sodomy conviction was overturned by Malaysia's top court in 2004.

A special election was held Tuesday after his wife vacated her seat, which she had held for two terms during Anwar's political exile. He regained the seat in a landslide victory.

Anwar's triumph came on the heels of big gains by the opposition in the March general elections that loosened the governing National Front's 51-year grip on power.

The Front returned to power with a simple majority of 140 seats in the 222-member house. Anwar's People's Alliance coalition increased its strength from 19 to 82 seats and needs 30 more to form a government.

"Anwar — whatever we think of him and many of us are deeply skeptical — is looking more and more like our future prime minister," columnist Karim Raslan wrote in The Star daily on Thursday. "There is a mounting sense of inevitability to his impending succession."

Tuesday's election also was a gauge of public anger against Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's administration, which the opposition has painted as corrupt, inefficient and uncaring toward minorities.

The opposition promises to scrap Malaysia's decades-old system of preferences for ethnic Malays. The government says that would jeopardize the country's unity.

Within hours of being sworn in on Thursday, Anwar led the opposition in a walkout to protest a proposed law that would make it mandatory for criminal suspects to provide DNA samples.

Critics say the law is meant to target Anwar, who has been accused of sodomizing a 23-year-old male aide in case separate from the 1999 one.

Anwar has dismissed the allegation as a "sickening" government conspiracy to prevent his rise to prime minister and has refused to give a DNA sample to police, saying he fears it would be tampered with.

A court will hear his case on Sept. 10 to set a date for the trial. Under Malaysian law, even consensual sodomy is punishable by up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

On Thursday, Home Minister Syed Hamid's closing speech on the DNA legislation debate was interrupted numerous times by heckling opposition lawmakers.

Just as Syed Hamid was finishing his speech, Anwar led all opposition members in a walkout, watched by stunned government lawmakers. He told reporters that the opposition had demanded the setting up of a select committee to study the bill first.

"We have walked out because they have refused to respond" to the request, he said. "So there's no point in staying and participating in this debate."

The former deputy prime minister and former finance minister managed to secure 67 per cent of votes cast in the pivotal by-election held on Tuesday in his home base of Permatang Pauh in Penang. The turnout of 81.01 per cent was surprisingly high, given the fact that it rained heavily in the area that day. This allayed fears that voters would stay away because of tension on the streets.

Declaring his triumph a landslide, the de facto leader of the opposition in Malaysia returns to Parliament after 10 trying years.

As a people’s representative in the august House, Anwar will be better able to convince fence-sitters in the governing coalition, the Barisan Nasional, that his Pakatan Rakyat opposition alliance is worth crossing over to. His sights seem to be set on the East Malaysian states where he is taking advantage of dissatisfaction among BN component parties over what they see as haughty treatment towards them by the federal government on the peninsula.

Anwar’s choice of Sept 16 as the day on which he will move against the government is therefore done largely for symbolic reasons. That was the day 45 years ago when the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, along with Singapore, joined Malaya to form Malaysia.

With the stakes being as high as they are now, Anwar’s victory holds great significance for the immediate stability of the country.

Permatang Pauh represents the first occasion after the March 8 elections that voters have had to express any regret they may have had about voting so strongly against the government. The increased margin for Anwar shows that voters have no regrets, and are in fact continuing their revolt against the federal government.

This means that the pressure on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s administration increases further. His schedule to stay in power until mid-2010 — which has locked his deputy, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak, into a continued position of loyalty — looks less likely to be entertained by his dominant party, Umno, in the coming months.

Furthermore, the fact that Najib was so strongly involved in leading the campaign against Anwar makes the BN’s defeat a personal one for him. The loser in this by-election is not Umno’s candidate, state assemblyman Datuk Arif Shah Omar Shah. It is instead the Abdullah-Najib team. They will now have to answer to the party.

With the Malay ground more split than it was on March 8, over questions of swearing on the Quran, rising prices and multiracialism, Umno division heads will find it harder to stay quietly loyal to a leadership that is dismally failing to stop the biggest challenge to the party in its history. Putting changes on hold, as Abdullah’s retirement schedule seems to aim at doing, will satisfy Umno’s many warlords even less after the opposition’s latest success.

The government is not being accused of having done nothing though. It is commonly alleged to be behind the sodomy charge against Anwar, for example. In fact, it was this factor that forced Anwar’s hand. In response to it, his wife resigned as a Member of Parliament for Permatang Pauh, forcing the government to call the by-election.

Since then, the alleged “victim” of the sodomy, Anwar’s former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, has sworn on the Quran that all he had said was true. More surprisingly, Najib, the target of rumours claiming he was involved in the murder of a Mongolian woman, also went through a similar controversial ritual.

Anwar’s refusal to do likewise and swear that he had not committed sodomy seemed at first to hurt his standing among Malay voters. However, the huge support he received in the polls shows that the BN’s initiative actually backfired. Bringing religious rituals into the basically secular business of voting did not go down well with the electorate.

The sodomy trial is set for Sept 10 though, and Anwar will have to appear in court on that day. His camp is worried for his safety, and will do all it can to keep him from being detained.

Besides this serious legal hurdle, Anwar has to contend with an administrative impediment suddenly put in place by Abdullah. The Prime Minister is presenting the annual budget at a surprisingly early time tomorrow. This reschedule includes Parliament going into immediate recess thereafter, to reconvene only on Oct 13, after the fasting month and subsequent open houses.

Any plans by Anwar to make a dramatic move in Parliament on Sept 16, for example through a no-confidence motion against the government, is therefore quashed. Abdullah is aware, as is Anwar, that in politics, forcing a plan to be postponed increases the likelihood of it being discarded completely.

The confrontation between the two coalitions is coming to a head, and as recent events in Malaysian politics show, we cannot but continue to expect the unexpected. — TODAY

ANALYSIS

AUG 27 — Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's stunning win at the Permatang Pauh by-election not only cemented his position as the undisputed leader of the opposition in Malaysia, it prompted senior Umno politicians to begin the countdown to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's last day in office.

The majority view is that he has to go by the end of the year if Umno and BN are to stand any chance of checking the advance of Pakatan Rakyat and holding onto to power at the next general elections.

Tuesday night was a repeat of March 8 with Pakatan Rakyat giddy with an electoral success and BN politicians dizzy with another rejection by the public.

But the joy was sweeter for the opposition because their icon not only won but did so in style, trouncing BN's Arif Shah by a 15,671 majority, 2,000 more votes than what his wife obtained five months ago.

The pain was more severe for BN because unlike March 8, they were not caught blind-sided. They poured in millions of ringgit into the campaign, brought their heavy hitters, threw every conceivable missile at Anwar but still ended up losing badly.

The consequences of the Permatang Pauh by-election could be far-reaching, with even Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's neatly-packaged two-year transition of power under threat from increasingly disillusioned party members and leaders of coalition partners.

On Tuesday, only two hours after the last box of votes had been counted, senior Umno politicians were in deep discussion over the need for Abdullah to step down, believing that he had lost the ability to check a resurgent opposition.

A check of the voting pattern at 25 polling stations showed that Anwar snared a handy portion of Malays votes and the bulk of non-Malay votes.

Even the Siamese electorate – a traditional bank of BN support – gave their vote to Anwar.

Najib put on a brave face, saying that Anwar's victory proved that democracy was alive in Malaysia. Left unsaid was that the BN defeat showed that not much had changed on the ground since March 8. Despite the raft of promises by Abdullah to reform the system, the public was not moved.

If anything, Permatang Pauh confirmed that Chinese and Indians no longer fear giving their support to the Opposition.

It also confirmed that the umbilical cord between the Malaysian voter and the Barisan Nasional has been severed.

BN politicians have compiled a list of excuses for the heavy defeat, saying that Permatang Pauh has always been Anwar's fortress; that the campaign was pockmarked with allegations and innuendoes and that the electorate was in no mood to support the establishment because of the rising cost of living.

But they all sounded like excuses and could not obscure the fact that BN suffered its heaviest by-election defeat in recent memory.

Never has BN been in a deeper hole. Never has Abdullah Ahmad Badawi faced such a bleak picture.

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